BIG NATIONAL PARK

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1930, Page 2

BIG NATIONAL PARK

IDEAL FOR AN ALPINIST ART HITTS PASS TO SOUNDS. NEW WESTLAND RESERVE. A big national park, taking in all the serrated backbone of the Southern Alps from Arthur’s I’asS Io the Sounds, were (here are already 2,266,09(1 acres of reserve, is (be magnificent conception of the president of the New Zealand Alpine Club (Mr. A. P. Harper), who recently added to the debt owed him by mountaineers as (he pioneer explorer of some of the most inaccessible parts of Westland’s mountain wonderland, by making representations to the Scenery Preservation Board which resulted in the acquisition by the Government as a scenic reserve of 64,000 acres in the Karangarua watershed. This is the biggest piece of land so z sei; apart for many years. By Mr. Harper’s efforts this was added to the existing Franz Josef and contemplated Cook River reserves. In all the world it would be hard to find as majestic a series of alpine peaks as extend southwards from Arthur’s .Pass to the southern fiords. The taking by the Crown of a, further 125,000 acres in Westland adds to the splendid adjoining playgrounds set apart for all time for the people, on country unfit for either settlement or milling, and which would otherwise, have undoubtedly offered merely the drab spectacle of a struggle for bare life amongst the stumps. Far too much forest has already been, sacrificed on poor lands in other parts of New Zealand, merely opening up 'the way for a. tangle of noxious weeds, and even the lower foothills of the Southern Alps offer little to the settler in Westland. What makes Westland unique from a scenic standpoint, however, is the variety of forest-locked lakes and bush-clad spurs that jqt out . into the fertile flats and craggy gorges with foaming streams, all accessible to the most cursory visitor, and forming a picturesque, dark pedestal for the mounting scenic glories of the eternal snows that have attracted the world’s ■best climbers to their crowning peaks. HARMONISED CONTROL NEEDED. There are already reserves under various Acts scattered along both sides of the Southern Alps, at present variously administered. Mr. Hamper’s aim is to harmonise their control under an honorary board, including Government representatives, and ultimately to consolidate ' the whole in a truly magnificent national park, parts of which, in his opinion, should bo conserved in their wild state, to give trampers and mountaineers the opportunity of exploration as best please themselves. Whatever is done to open up South Westland by the bridging of the rivers south of the Cook and the roading of the district—reading the lHaast Pass is frequently pressed by motorists—there should, says Mr. Harper, be parts of Westland left- just as they are for the young men and women who like to carry their pack and enjoy their trip in the mountains none the less because their holiday costs are only those of their outfit and stores. The chief joys in such excursions are the feeling of independence, the pleasure of blazing one’s own trail, and the opportunity of seeing Nature unspoiled. In the Cook and Karangarna Valleys these conditions have been safeguarded for all time by the proclamation of the new ieserve. Acquisition of the land under the Scenery Preservation Act of 190 S does not make it a national park, but it makes, the latter ideal possible ultimately. ' LITTLE KNOWN REGION. I South of the Franz Josef and tne Fox Glaciers, Westland is little known to the people of New Zealand, because of the many swift, and sometimes treacherous, rivers such as the Cook, Katangarua, and others as yet nnbridge.l. Tourist traffic, of the comfortable type, ■ stops at the Fdx, but beyond that lies sonie wonderful country, part of which, is taken in by the new reServe, covering the Cook River Valley and the Karangarna River Valley. The two blocks of land comprising it, 64,060 acres and 61,000 acres, adjoin each other and in turn adjoin the Franz Josef Reserve, 48,500. acres, and a small reserve of 14,120 acres, making in all nearly 190,000 acres of continuous reserve in Westland. On the eastern side of the So-lthr ern Alps, in Canterbury, lies the Tasman Park, 97,800 acres, so that there is now a block of national reserve of nearly 300,000 aci-es, spreading over the backbone of the central portion of the South . Island. Much of it is not explored, and some of it has been penetrated only by the first exploration, an exception'’ ing the middle branch of the Cook River, which was again visited by Mr. Harper and the late Mr. C. E. Douglas, and the only other branch of the Cook River again visited was that toured by Dr. Teichebuan and his party in 1905, eleve.| years after the first exploration. This party followed this branch up and crossed to the Hermitage. WHAT NEW RESERVE HOLDS. Describing the country thus set apart from the commercial vandal, Mr. Harper, who knows it thoroughly, having been the first to explore thoroughly the middle branch of the Cook River in 1894, with the late Mr. Douglas, since when that country has been visited by no other party, said that in no other area of its size that he had seen, even in Switzerland, was there such a variety and magnificence of scenery. He believed that the river route, of the middle branch of the Cook River was inipnssable. For seven miles it was practically filled by the Balfour Glacier, a narrow defile shut in on the east by Mount Tasman, a precipice of 7500 feet. The north branch, from the Fox Glacier, was well knopn, but the third and south branch ran through a very deep and narrow valley, only getting the sun at midday, and presented as one obstacle a big bluff, to circumvent which one climbed almost vertically 700 feet through the bush, while further up were huge boulders. For three weeks in 1894 Mr. Harper and Mr. C. E. Douglas explored this region. It took them four days to go four miles in the part just mentioned. One. of the hug© glacially deposited boulders was 156 feet high and 843 feet in circumference, and the bottom of the valley was covered by similar boulders in varying sizes. Four miles again from the last of the boulders was La. Perouse Glacier, in a valley walled by magnificent precipices, with La Perouse (10,161 feet) and Hicks (10,401 feet) at its head. KARANGARUA’g wonders. The valley of the Karangarna offend unique attractions, said Mr. Harper. The north branch of the Karangarua was the Copland, from which was reached the Copland Pass, now a, well-known alpine route from Westland to Canterbury, but the middle and south branches were finer in some respects, and very little known. The middle branch, coming from the Douglas Glacier, had an impassable gorge. "Tlie whole river is walled in on the south by stupendous cliffs, rising to m© l ' 3000 feet sheer,'’ said Mr. Harper. ‘'The bead basin is the weirdest place. I have

ever seen, surrounded by precipices, bleak and barren, from which the roar of the ice avalanches from the Douglafe Glacier echo and re-echo throughout the day. Dr. Macintosh Bell, the late Director of our Geological Survey, and Ins party are the only ones to have followed this route, some 14 years after my exploration, and his official account of confirms my original opinion that the place is unique in any alpine region. Thfe bush of the whole valley is the gem of South Westland.”